Step 6: Overview of the making the robots

How to build your own autonomous, self-assembling robots. This project describes every detail of the robots used in our scientific research including CAD files, source code, assembly instructions, etc. Hopefully everything you would need to reproduce our experiments, or have a fun toy. A portion of the research was published in Nature, a copy of that paper is attached below. Also attached below is an extract from the PhD thesis which contains a summary of all the experiments performed using these robots and details about their construction and specifications. Lastly, videos of several of the experiments are attached. For further information beyond the specifics relating to these robots, go to: http://alumni.media.mit.edu/~saul/PhD

Step 1: Making the printed circuit boards (PCB's)

The PCB's were designed using the Eagle PCB design software (http://www.cadsoft.de). I've attached the Eagle CAD files as well as the Gerber files. The Gerber files are what you can send directly to a PCB fabrication service to get the boards made. I also included panelized gerber files - this version has 16 of the robot pcb's per panel for more cost efficient manufacturing.

Step 2: Electronics overview

We designed the electronics to be simple and flexible, because we had not finalized the robot design when we started and planned to try a variety of control algorithms, actuators, and communications methods. We also needed the electronics to be small and light. We decided to go with fairly small SMT parts for the final design, and were able to get a microcontroller, 10 status LED's, 4 FET's for driving actuators, and the programming/power header onto the 25mm x 25mm board, plus connection points for 4 actuators and 4 sensors. We tried making the board even smaller, but it became too hard to assemble. Our strategy for simple and flexible worked out - we've since used leftover boards for 3 other, totally unrelated projects.

at first, I was going to point out that your microcontroller isn't lined up, polarity-wise (the notched corner usually matches the part marking on the pcb/pwb/wtf-ever) Then I noticed ALL the corners are notched. Did you use the writing on the MC to orient your polarity, or does it not matter?

I could be mistaken, but it looks like there's a small circular indent in the top left of the m/c, sorta hiding under that wire. Yes it would definitely matter, so if I'm wrong and there's no indent, they must have used the writing to orient it as you suggest.

Silly monkeys! It's all fun and games until Skynet gets us, or Replicators take over. I won't mention "The Matrix" 'cuz that's just stoopid. I mean, come on Wackoffski brothers or whatever you call yourselves, have at least some regard for thermodynamics.

Oh. I was in no way disparaging the acting talent of Mr. Reeves, he just had so little to work with, script-wise, in those films, ha... hah... haah... hahaha HA HA! (sorry, I just couldn't type that with a straight face...)